Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Interested in what automated burner you decided on and what sort of price the blank disks are for you. Buying 10 at a time here costs me $180US +tax

I bought Vinpower Digital's "The Cube". It has 2 LG burners, a 500gig hard drive and doesn't require a computer to operate. I burned 50 BD-R copies last week for it's first job and it work great. Time will tell how it holds up though.

I have been buying the inject printable BD-R's from the Primera on-line store for about $190 for 25. I am still shopping around though for the best price on these discs, so please share if you find a better source. The Cube does not print on the discs but I already own a Bravo II DVD publisher that I use for printing on the BD-R discs.

Thanks for the info on Encore. I am currently using the Mac CS3 version. I will check out Sonic Avid DVD and see if I like the program better. I have a XW8400 PC I that I can set up to try the program out.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

My understanding is that for HD you'll want to choose 601/707, and for SD projects choose RGB.

Hello J,

I know you are a very busy person so you may not have had any time to look at the "Settings" tutorial I mentioned a few posts above.

I found that for SD the RGB setting gave the best colours. 601/607 were definitely washed out.

For HD, I found that the results were in favour of RGB too. BUT the difference was almost negligible.

However, as we have discussed elsewhere, there can be variations in results depending on the original footage source, quality etc.

Regards,Douglas

PS. A big factor is, of course, whether we are talking MAC or PC. I have no experience with MAC systems. So anything mentioned in my tutorials can really only be applied, with any degree of certainty, to the PC world.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

I bought Vinpower Digital's "The Cube". It has 2 LG burners, a 500gig hard drive and doesn't require a computer to operate.

Thanks for the info. Helped with my research.

FWIW I could not get Avid DVD to make the Blu Ray with the Menu structure I wanted, probably incompetence on my part. Having even less initial experience with Encore than Avid DVD I was able (eventually) to make the Encore multi video and multi menu Blu Ray work.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

No sweat Hedeen --- I copied/pasted some of it from the first page (my comments about this with Gaijin aka Douglas)

"For HDV material, you are correct -
you can should be able to go direct from Avid to Avid DVD without
problems. The option for Sorenson is open, BUT if the QT ref from Avid
(in part 1) looks good enough then you can skip it and go straight to
Avid DVD. I'm basing this off other cst experiences I had with HDV
into Blu Ray (the first guy I handled, went direct from Avid to Avid
DVD --- didn't use Sorenson at all --- and ended up playing it on a PS3
--- that was another load of probs btw.. but it worked once we had the right info.)"

I'll chime my cents to your answers here (through the experiences
I've been through). For anyone new to this conversation, I mentioned
this workflow was done using P2 material (but other input is welcome
for Red Users, XDCAM, etc.)

-------------------------

Just
did some tests ---- here's my revised answers below. ALSO please
disregard that private message I sent, since I was able to test this
here.

Hedeen:

Here's my deal. i might have missed it in previous replies.. but. this is for an HDV to Blu Ray set up.

here's my export settings.

1. Can't do QT ref. i get the LONG GOP error message. must "Send to QT movie"

----
Correct. If you notice, when you turn on Clip Resolutions in the
timeline, with HDV, it lists "HDV 1080i 60" as the codec. You'll want
to change this to DNxHD-TR 145. I would transcode your footage to this
DNxHD.

Once that is transcoded THEN you should be able to export
QT ref from Avid ---> then go to Avid DVD. The QT ref settings I
use are from the pdf at the beginning of this page. I'll leave the
other answers however, just for those who wanted to read them.

-------------------answers to QT movie for export to Avid DVD ---------------------

2. can't do "same as source" which is great for SD... but
again...LONG GOP error. must do custom. --- correct custom is what you
want (this is also what happens when usign XDCAM HD material for the BD
process).

4. Color Levels . i pick RGB. looks better. ----- this is completely
up to you. I've been told a couple of times, RGB is for SD, and
601/709 for HD (or for broadcast work). Again, it's up to you.

5. FILE FIELD ORDER. been told HDV is UFF... Odd. which is correct?
----- I don't have a definitive answer on that, so I'm open to
correction here. My understanding was ----pending on the format you
shot, whether it was interlaced or progressive, since there is now HDV
in 1080/24 option now, you'll want to export Odd for progressive and
Even for interlaced (59.94, 60i)

6. Aspect... i pick 16X9... not native. ------This is up to you, the
QT export Aspect ratio will tell you what lines of resolution are there
when you export (e.g. when you do native, it might say 1440x1080 for
HDV)

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Somewhat off topic here, but who is responsible for maintaining Avid DVD by Sonic?

I tried reporting a bug in button highlighting since late 2006 (http://community.avid.com/forums/p/27314/152367.aspx#152367) but nobody from Avid wants to respond, and Sonic has no support site for Avid DVD by Sonic. It is an aggravating problem which, for me, makes Avid DVD by Sonic useless for any DVD / Blu-ray project that uses menus.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Somewhat off topic here, but who is responsible for maintaining Avid DVD by Sonic?

1. I do not know the answer to that question,

BUT

2. I have used Sonic/Roxio's DVDitProHD for many years now.The official Tech Support used to work reasonably well.The support forum is a user forum with little or no comments from the Sonic itself.The support forum has always been slow with few responses to questions.One ray of light was a Sonic tech staff member who did try and respond to questions.He was always open to direct emails and gave me many tips.He would send me urls to download newer updates of DVDitProHD. Updates which were never officially posted on the Sonic site.However he left Sonic late last year and now Support is very very slow and the answers are not usually much help.

Who knows what is happening inside Sonic, as far as the further development of DVDitProHD goes.

It is, in my opinion, highly unlikely that Avid can be held responsible for the development of AvidDVD, as the product is a Sonic product (with the lable "AvidDVD") and is the responsibility of the development team at Sonic.

I am still using AvidDVD. It does what I want for the time being. I have not seen any special problems with the highlighting of buttons. Maybe you could post some more details and see if anyone can help you here.

In the meantime I am looking around to see if there is any newer product that will fill the place of AvidDVD, if I decide to move on.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Taking my first steps on the BluRay encoding front, to create one-off screening copies for a 1080/24.00p feature.

The sequence contains some unrendered color corrections and masks, so I do not export QT Ref, but a same-as-source QT file in Rec709 . Seems to work fine, but when I drag it into Avid DVD, and create a disc, it appears to remap the levels (which is not necessary since the source already is Rec709. When I encode using Squeeze, it allows me to define the source as already being 16-235, and then it works fine.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Pardon my ignorance - when you export a QT same as source, I thought it renders the files anyways?

True. I was just meaning to say that a QT Ref is not going to be much faster. The downside of same-as-source is that I get a big file, the upside is that I can take this file away from my edit systems onto my laptop or home computer (which cannot access the Avid mediafiles) when I need to (and I often do).

It's a pity that the RGB/709 levels issue cannot be addressed in Avid DVD. Part of the Avid workflow, it should allow us to have an all-709 workflow, without the need to convert back and forth to RGB (clipping levels).

Another thing: I have Avid DVD set to a high quality and PCM sound, but when I encode for BD in Squeeze, then drag the files into Avid DVD, it warns me that some of the files will need transcoding, and when authoring a BD, it will transcode my audio from WAV to AC3. Why is that? I want to be able to stick with PCM. How can I achieve that?

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Ah makes sense now (taking QT to another system etc). I always tried exporting QT ref. to external drive with the media files, and just dragged that external drive from machine to machine, when needed --- just to show where I am coming from ;p

Does this RGB issue happen in 5.7 as well? I have to be honest in saying I didn't really notice it , but again maybe it's my workflow, or that I didn't see a huge difference in colors in burning the last 10 dvds. If I have time, maybe I can ask someone at Sonic

As for the audio transcoding thing I BELIEVE, there is an option to set in Project Settings > HD transcoding > and you uncheck the option to "transcode" files. I'm not in front of one now, but that's what I remember off top of my head.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Hi, I see this post is a bit old but just wanted to know if there´s a
solution for problem I have. I´m testing different options
for BluRay Authoring... I stepped into DVDARCHITECTPRO and everything
worked just fine, I´m now giving AVID SONIC DVD a try, since our whole facility works with AVID hard/soft, but I´m having
some problems getting the recorded BD to work on a consumer BD player,
the strange thing is that I can play it with PowerDVD on my windows
vista system.

My system configuration is MC 4.0.2 and AVID SONIC
6.1.I sarted working from AVCINTRA100 720p50 material captured from a
P2 card. Transcoded the final sequence to DNXHD120. SENDTODVDAUTHORING
via QT REF digital mastering native dimensions and metasync track. I then import that REF in Sonic and write to
disk through a PAL project 1280x720 50fps dolby audio (converting all
compliant video and audio files is checked). Consumer player is a Samsung BD-P1600.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Hi there - just curious, can you play this Blu Ray in other consumer
BD players? E.g. if you go to a best buy, and test play on other
players

It looks like it burned properly, if you can playback on
your PowerDVD player. There are a few cases where some BD players dont
work, either because of firmware needed, or a patch (the patch is
specifically related to PS3 playback). I sent a message to Sonic about
one BD player, which I'm waiting to hear back on --- it however, is not
the BDP1600

fsancho:

Hi, I see this post is a bit old but just wanted to know if there´s a
solution for problem I have. I´m testing different options
for BluRay Authoring... I stepped into DVDARCHITECTPRO and everything
worked just fine, I´m now giving AVID SONIC DVD a try, since our whole facility works with AVID hard/soft, but I´m having
some problems getting the recorded BD to work on a consumer BD player,
the strange thing is that I can play it with PowerDVD on my windows
vista system.

My system configuration is MC 4.0.2 and AVID SONIC
6.1.I sarted working from AVCINTRA100 720p50 material captured from a
P2 card. Transcoded the final sequence to DNXHD120. SENDTODVDAUTHORING
via QT REF digital mastering native dimensions and metasync track. I then import that REF in Sonic and write to
disk through a PAL project 1280x720 50fps dolby audio (converting all
compliant video and audio files is checked). Consumer player is a Samsung BD-P1600.

Re: Blu-ray Made Easy: A three part guide from Avid editing systems to Sorenson Squeeze to Avid DVD by Sonic

Problem is I don´t have any other Bluray player to test on it. I´ll have to look for one.

Anyway, as I said before, coming from DVDARCHITECT, bluray works fine on Powerdvd AS WELL AS on samsung consumer BD player. So it must be something about the way SONIC actually records the bluray, don´t you think?

What I haven´t found anywhere is the CODEC in which SONIC makes de BD. Sony DVD ARCHITECT for instance, gives you the possibility of working in AVC or MPEG2 Supported formats. Do you know on which codec SONIC relies?